


neither false nor full

by openmouthwideeye



Series: The Imp's Wife [6]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-08-18 15:31:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8166923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openmouthwideeye/pseuds/openmouthwideeye
Summary: Tyrion ruminates on the love and bitterness.





	

**Author's Note:**

> **JB Week '16, Day 5: Betrayal**
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks, Isy, for your excellent beta work.

Tyrion paused under the high arch of the parapet, just inside the shrinking shadows. _Fitting, that_ , he thought, watching sunlight dust two flaxen heads with golden halos. They were of a level, Galladon and Brienne. Tyrion had the wry thought that he should join them. _As tall on my own two feet as my eight-year-old son and my wife on her rump. But rather more likely to disgrace myself._ He had never belonged in the bailey, surrounded by blunted swords and memories that never lost their edge.

Galladon slashed the air, brow furrowed in concentration. When he felled a particularly vile strawman, he turned to his mother, all gap-toothed triumph. She smiled back at him. In Tyrion’s mind-eye, Jaime’s smile danced in every flash of sunlight on steel, teasing and cocksure as ever. His brother was the only person besides their son who could unfetter Brienne’s wide, horsey smile. Tyrion had seen it in King’s Landing, stuffing desperate glances and unguarded moments into his purse like the spoils of war. Rotten and sweet had oozed together, until he had not known which was which.

 _Was it the same for them?_ The thought plagued him like greyscale, cracking his mind from within. _Was it worth the worm to taste the apple?_

Tyrion did not love his wife, as she well knew. He had never tried. That part of him was twisted and blackened, a husk of a boy shriveled as much by bitterness as by dragon fire. But he loved Galladon with a fierceness that his father had denied him, a fierceness he’d thought Jaime—  

Sunlight licked his boots, straining higher, higher, to brush a kiss against the twisted stub of his nose.

 _Companionship_ , he thought wryly, watching his wife take their son by the shoulders to adjust his stance, make him strong. _There’s something to be said for an untroubled marriage._

He had no cause for concern, truly. If there was one thing in this world surer than winter, it was his wife’s unwavering honor. Lady Lannister would stand by her vows until the seas rose up and tore Casterly Rock asunder, no matter that he’d paid her with false coin. She would never forsake her wretched honor, not for freedom nor Tarth nor his brother.

 _More’s the pity_. He longed for his wife to dishonor their sacred vows as he longed for wine to drown him each time he slipped into some whore’s bed, cock harder than it would ever be for Brienne, whose face was as ugly and scarred as his own.

 _I am a perverse Imp_ , he thought. _If she weren’t so bloody honorable, I would sleep better at night_. Her dishonor would be the sweetest refrain, soothing his guilt to silence. _Other brides might receive protection from their husbands. I covered Brienne in a cloak of regret._

She sat on the hard-packed dirt, uncaring of the dust fading her skirts as she rearranged their son’s grip on the hilt. Tyrion wondered if her own fingers itched with want, or if memory stayed her longing as it did her practice. He would never know that part of her.

 _Most parts of her_ , he corrected, feeling a faint edge of bitterness he had no right to. At times it crept up on him, souring the parts of her he knew so well: her broad smile when Galladon mastered some new skill, her tedious mein when they entertained Lannister bannermen, the life in her eyes when her thoughts strayed to his brother.

Jaime. When it came to his brother, his thoughts were a muddle. A hash of longing and fury that defied reason, and something else, something faded and tired like dust clinging to boots after a cumbersome journey.

At first there was only the fury. The fierceness of it had caught him in its claws, razed him until all he’d wanted was to loose wildfire on everything Jaime held dear. He’d felt longing, too, choking him like ash as he roared his ire, clearing a pocket of air to spit sentiment and memory to the earth and grind it to mud beneath his boots. But now the mud had dried, cracked, flaked back into the air to be breathed anew.

Brienne had done that, with her innocent eyes and her hoarded tales, more precious than all the gold beneath the Rock.

 _Jaime betrayed me_ , he admitted to himself at last, _but I betrayed her_.

Tyrion shook off the morning’s shadows and stepped into the sunlit yard. “Galladon,” he called, “best put that sword down, or soon you’ll run off every squire in the Rock.”

Galladon dropped his sword and ran to his father. Pride coursed through him, hot and fierce as dragon’s fire. He ruffled his son’s hair as Galladon babbled about some new skill, mindless of his father’s disinterest in the subject at hand. Galladon would be as strong as his mother, and as brave, too, with all his father’s wits and none of his baser aspects. He would bear neither their deformities nor their scars.

Brienne rose to her feet, skirts dropping in heavy folds. Faint puffs of dust twined round her like sea-mist. He did not think her smile was feigned.

 _Neither false, nor full_ , he thought.

“Tyrion,” she greeted simply.

He smiled up at her. “You should leave Galladon’s training to the master-at-arms, my lady. Our son is so much improved the man’s beginning to fear for his position.”

Once she might have missed the jape, but she knew him rather better now.

“Ser Benedict is a great knight, but he has too many squires.”

“I like practicing with Mother,” the boy piped up, and Brienne’s smile touched her eyes.

“Quite right, son,” Tyrion said. “I’ve found a woman’s touch improves almost any situation.”

The innuendo sailed over his son’s head— _he is short enough for that, at least_ —but his wife leveled him with a hard stare. Tyrion grinned up at her baldly, and she rolled her eyes, reaching over to fix a cowlick in Galladon’s hair. Sunlight flitted across the yard, and birds trilled a melody, as if to herald summer’s arrival at last.

It was a mummer’s show, but a sweet one.

“Best be off, wife,” Tyrion told her as Galladon ducked away to recover his sword. “There’s much to be done.”

Her face took on a resigned cast. Tyrion almost laughed.

“Another bannerman? Lord Brax departed only yesterday. The cooks will not be pleased.”

 _The cooks have grown taller and more freckled than I recall_ , he thought ruefully.

“The cooks must suffer through it,” he said instead. “Her Grace has finally deigned to visit our dusty little Rock. She leaves on the morrow with fifty knights, two dozen retainers, her husband and his Sand Snakes . . .”

He paused, courting the hope that kindled in her eyes. For love or loathing of his brother, he did not know.

“. . . and all her Kingsguard.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I know. This universe is mean. The prompt was betrayal, y'know?
> 
> Feedback appreciated.


End file.
